This lead to prices rocketing and the savings unfortunately became worthless. The Treaty was largely responsible for this. During the World War in order to pay the large costs of it, the Kaiser suspended the convertibility of its currency into gold when the war broke out. Unlike France, which imposed its first income tax to pay for the war, the German parliament decided to fund the war entirely by borrowing. The result lead to the rate of the value of Marks against dollar increasing greatly.
Hitler criticized the carving up of Europe by the "Big Four" (the US, UK, France and Italy), stating that the Germans were the "master race". While World War I and the Treaty of Versailles was just over a decade before his rise to power, it played a large role in the propaganda Hitler spread about in order to gain support from the people and influence them with his ideas. After World War I, Europe's economy was in a great recession. The US, in a post-war economic boom, had been sending aid to various European nations and the world economy was brought up by their economic success. The 1929 Great Depression in the States had a global impact, and most prominently on Germany.
How ‘golden’ were the golden years of Weimar in the period 1924-1929? The Weimar Republic was a state born out of crisis after Germany had been defeated in World War I and Kaiser Wilhelm II had been forced to abdicate. While the years of Weimar to seem ‘golden’ in comparison with preceding years, as there were no putsches and it was relatively stable politically it could be argued that on a larger scale there were still fundamental flaws within the Weimar regime, shown through the vast amounts of unstable coalitions, thus indicating that the years of Weimar were not as golden as originally perceived. A factor which seems to suggest that the golden years of the Weimar republic in the period 1924-1929 were ‘golden’ is the fact that economic stability was returned to Germany, mostly through the actions of the foreign minister, Stresemann. Stresemann ended the hyperinflation crisis of 1923 by introducing a new currency, the Rentenmark, which was backed by US loans to replace the now worthless mark.
Hitler’s rise to power in January of 1933 was not something which suddenly occurred overnight. Despite a rapid turn of events which lead to Hitler’s appointment of Chancellor (subsequently leading to the Nazi dictatorship), there were multiple turning points which enabled Hitler to gain power through clever manipulation of situations he was not responsible for and the use of his associates to his advantage. By 1929 Germany stumbled upon a calamity when the Wall Street crash occurred, affecting global economies. As most of the German loans were from America disaster struck when these were cut. Unemployment hurtled upwards from 1.5 million to 4.3 million in just one year and had risen to 6 million by 1932.
Economic reasons were a major factor which helped and affected Hitlers rise to power. In 1923 hyper-inflation conflicted with Germany. People in Germany were affected economically. Production fell and prices rose. Middle classes were hit harder than the upper classes because wealthy people were protected since their wealth was inflation proof, for instance jewelery, art and real estate.
Herbert Hoover, unlucky in entering The White House only eight months before the stock market crash, had struggled tirelessly, but ineffectively, to set the wheels of industry in motion again. His Democratic opponent, Franklin D. Roosevelt, already popular as the governor of New York during the developing crisis, argued that the Depression stemmed from the U.S. economy's underlying flaws, which had been aggravated by Republican policies during the 1920s. President Hoover replied that the economy was fundamentally sound, but had been shaken by the repercussions of a worldwide depression -- whose causes could be traced back to the war. Behind this argument lay a clear implication: Hoover had to depend largely on natural processes of recovery, while Roosevelt was prepared to use the federal government's authority for bold experimental
The total agreed by the Allies in 1921 came up to £6,600 billion. It is important to remember that the German's economic might had been stretched to its very limits during the war. Additionally, the Germans had to rebuild their own economy whilst paying reperations at the same time. A lot of Germany's income were precious sources of raw materials in her colonies, which had been taken away by the Treaty.All of this made it that much harder for the German economy to cope, without adding the 1.7 million men lost during the war and 4.2 million wounded. Economy aside, there were also many military restrictions.
World War 1 caused the death of nearly nine million people and cost huge sums of money. Therefore most countries were anxious to avoid another war. The appeasement policy was the efforts by Britain from 1936 to 1939 to allow Nazi Germany to have pretty much everything Germany wanted in the hopes that eventually Hitler would be appeased and stop his aggressive policies. Chamberlain believed in appeasement. Chamberlain let Hitler build up the German armed force although that was contravention of Treaty of Versailles.
There were many attributes that aided Hitler in his rise to power. Since the First World War in 1914 Germany’s government had been very unstable, and of course was not helped by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. Due to the reparations evoked by the treaty and the cost of war, Germany experienced hyperinflation that was only solved in 1924 with a series of loans from America. Just as Germany’s economy was improving the Wall Street crash occurred in 1929 where America requested repayment of all their loans. These events created the perfect conditions for a new radical party to rise to power: The Nazis.
Explain the economic and political effects of the First World War on Italy between 1915 and 1918 The war imposed serious strains on the Italian economy. The cost of keeping soldiers armed and fed led to a large budget deficit. So as a result they were forced to borrow heavily from abroad. Spiralling war debt ended up at 85 billion Iira, fivefold increase on 1914 figure. Due to this debt the government then resulted in printing money and this resulted in inflation.